THE PYRAMIDS ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY HE approach to the Pyramids is first a rich green THE plain, and then the Desert; that is, they are just at the beginning of the Desert, on a ridge which, of itself, gives them a lift above the valley of the Nile. It is impossible not to feel a thrill as one finds oneself drawing nearer to the greatest and the most ancient monuments in the world, to see them coming out stone by stone into view, and the dark head of the Sphinx peering over the lower sand-hills. Yet, the usual accounts are correct which represent this nearer sight as not impressive-their size diminishes, and the clearness with which you see their several stones strips them of their awful or mysterious character. It is not till you are close under the great Pyramid and look up at the huge blocks rising above you into the sky, that the consciousness is forced upon you that this is the nearest approach to a mountain that the art of man has produced. The view from the top has the same vivid contrast of Life and Death which makes all wide views in Egypt striking-the Desert and the green plain : only, the view over the Desert-the African Desert-being much more extensive here than elsewhere, one gathers in better the notion of the wide heaving ocean of sandy billows which I hovers on the edge of the Valley of the Nile. The white line of the minarets of Cairo is also a peculiar featurepeculiar because it is strange to see a modern Egyptian city which is a grace instead of a deformity to the view. You also see the strip of Desert running into the green plain on the east of the Nile, which marks Heliopolis and Goshen. The strangest feature in the view is the platform on which the Pyramids stand. It completely dispels the involuntary notion that one has formed of the solitary abruptness of the Three Pyramids. Not to speak of the groups in the distance, of Abou-Sir, Sakara, and Dashurthe whole platform of this greatest of them all, is a maze of Pyramids and Tombs. Three little ones stand beside the first, three also beside the third. The second and third are each surrounded by traces of square enclosures, and their eastern faces are approached through enormous masses of ruins as if of some great temple; whilst the first is enclosed on three sides by long rows of massive tombs, on which you look down from the top as on the plats of a stone-garden. You see in short that it is the most sacred and frequented part of that vast cemetery which extends all along the western ridge for twenty miles behind Memphis. It is only by going around the whole place in detail that the contrast between its present and its ancient state is disclosed. One is inclined to imagine that the Pyramids are immutable, and that such as you see them now such they always were. Of distant views this is true, but taking them near at hand it is more easy from the existing ruins |